A standard apparatus for machining an elongated workpiece with a tool is described in German patent document 10 2008 037145. It has a support column having a generally planar and vertical front wall on which is mounted a workpiece holder for holding the workpiece forward of the front wall in a vertical orientation. A pair of vertical guides on the front is walls flank the workpiece holder and each carry a vertically shiftable vertical slide forward of the front wall. Each vertical slide in turn has a horizontal guide on which is mounted a respective tool holder horizontally shiftable in the respective horizontal guide on the vertical slide forward of the front wall and adapted to hold a respective tool. Thus horizontal movement of the holders on the respective vertical slides engages the tools horizontally with the workpiece in the workpiece holder and vertical movement of the vertical slides in the respective guide moves the tools vertically along the tool.
The problem with this construction is that it is quite wide. The guides and workpiece holder must move vertically in their own paths so that the apparatus has to be wide enough measured horizontally parallel to the front wall to accommodate all this equipment. This is disadvantageous in an operation where a number of such apparatuses need to be accommodated and, often, served by a single person or automatic loader/unloader.